Halladay holstered his gun and then smacked Jon upside the head.
“Ow,” Jon said. “What the hell was that for?”
“I’m only here because the King told me what you said to her, so I went looking for you, to tell you what a fuckin’ dumbass you are.”
“Why?”
“For thinkin’ the Mayor is crooked.”
“I know she is now,” Jon said.
“How’s that?”
“I’m on the GS protection list, and sure enough, right after I confront the Mayor, an assassin tries to kill me.”
“Och!” the older cop said, shaking his head. “Did it ever occur to you that your protection list might be a hit list?”
“Yeah, but—”
“But you’re not thinkin’ with your head right now, Casanova.”
“The Mayor just threatened me, Frank. That’s a fact.”
“What did she say, exactly?”
“Something about taking action if I don’t drop my theory about her.”
Halladay raised his hand slightly, as if he was going to hit Jon again, but the younger cop moved backward a little.
“She was talking about firing you, Piss-Pants.” He shook his head again, then turned around to head back to the Flatiron Building. “Come on, you need to hear the latest from the Princess.”
The rain seemed even stronger to Jon, and the storm more menacing, on the brief walk back to headquarters. Or maybe it was just because he was more confused now than when he had walked out.
As he realized that he might be back at square one, a hopeless feeling began flooding over him in concert with the rain. He tried to buoy himself by remembering why he had taken this job in the first place, but that just made it worse. He had now alienated the Mayor, who was the one person who could give him the kind of recommendations he wanted for the future, and the motivation of catching the killer was ebbing because his chances seemed so slim. He remembered Anton Versa, the police chief in Philadelphia, talking about the “bigger picture” of helping the rest of the cities that would experience Dayfall, but right now that was being crowded out of his mind by the picture of a beautiful woman who, he suspected, was going to end up being a big disappointment for him. Anger at her was growing in him, mixed with anger at himself for letting his heart screw up the case.
The adrenaline from that emotion was enough to offset the feelings of hopelessness, and once he was back in the building, Jon washed his face and changed his clothes, and then went to join Halladay and Amira in the lab.
“What’s up?” he said when he got there, trying to make a new start.
“A lot,” Amira said. “We’ve got new info on the Dayfall murder locations, the chaos crimes, the NYU teachers, and your… uh, friend at the bar.” She glanced at Halladay, who raised his eyebrows. “Which do you want first?”
“The order you just said,” Jon answered, wanting to make sure he didn’t allow Mallory to be the priority in his mind, and not wanting Amira and Halladay to think she was.
“Okay, the Dayfall murder locations,” Amira began. “Now that we have the GS map of the underground, with all their modifications on it, I found out there’s subterranean access into every building where the Dayfall Killer has struck. They’re all near subway tunnels, used or unused, and they all have passageways from the tunnels to their basements put in by GS engineers when they were securing the underground. There are over a hundred such access points throughout the city, all below buildings because entrances on the surface would be too easy to discover. Where they could, they made use of already existing underground structures, like the floors below the library and the abandoned construction below Grand Central.”
“So our ghost-who-walks-through-walls mystery has been solved,” Halladay added. “The one who just attacked you was using them to sneak in and out of those buildings to play with his cutlery collection, and Shinsky could use them to disappear after working the crowd with his.”
“Here’s an overlay of the underground map and the fatalities and injuries that happened during the chaos crimes,” Amira said as she brought it up on a nearby screen. “As you suspected, there is a pattern to them…. They all started with fatal wounds that took place near access points from the underground, and then spread out in concentric circles, with the nonfatal injuries happening as people panicked after the fatal ones occurred. And as you can see by the different times and locations of the circles, Shinsky could easily have caused almost all of this by himself. You can actually tell where he waded into a crowd, did his thing, then traveled to another place a little later via the underground and did it again. And here’s what made it seem like there was chaos all over the city….”
She added another overlay to the map that showed a bunch of red spots that were also near access points to the underground, but in different parts of the city than the ones before.
“These are the fires and explosions that took place when the sun came out briefly,” Amira said. “This is obvious enough that it didn’t take me long to figure it out once I knew what to look for, thanks to your suggestions. One wonders why the Chaos Crimes people don’t seem to know it.”
“Maybe they do,” Halladay said, “but they’re just not doing anything about it.”
“So there’s a third perp, one who’s a pyro,” Jon said. “The short guy carves up people inside buildings to scare the city, the big guy slashes people in crowds to create panic on the streets, and the third one does it by burning and blowing shit up so it’ll look like the city’s descending into chaos because of the Dayfall.”
“All because Garth Vader wants them to feel unsafe,” Halladay offered, “so they’ll vote for him on Tuesday.”
Jon looked at Amira, who nodded slightly.
“Or,” the young cop said, “someone else who has access to the underground is behind it.” Halladay reacted, but he went on. “Look, Frank, you can hit me in the head all you want, but Mayor King did make a payment to Carter at NYU. That’s still the hardest evidence we have about who wants there to be fear in the city.”
“She explained that to you, Piss-Pants.”
“Stop calling me that!” Jon started to say, but Amira jumped in….
“It could be precisely because Mayor King is well intentioned that her payment was so easily discovered. She doesn’t know how to hide a bribe like criminals do, nor does she have as much need to.”
“No offense intended, Amira,” Jon interrupted. “But Gotham Security is prejudiced against your religion—they would never hire you—so don’t you think that might make you biased against them?”
“No offense taken,” the woman in the head scarf replied. “But one reason I like my religion is that it emphasizes justice, and I’m determined to be just in my judgments. My older brother was killed in a crime on the streets of New York when I was a teenager—that’s why I wanted to be a cop in the first place, and I fought through a lot of obstacles to make it to where I am. I’m actually sympathetic to GS because it’s true that the police are hog-tied sometimes, so I think I’m seeing this objectively.” She paused and met Jon’s stare. “So can I finish what I was saying?”
“Of course,” he said.
“I took a closer look at the professors’ accounts, and I realized there’s something important that’s not there.”
“What’s that?”
“Housing payments. I couldn’t find any mortgage or rent.”
“So you’re thinking someone could be giving them a place to live as incentive to promote the chaos theories.”
“Though it would have to be a really nice place,” Amira said, after nodding, “to offset the amount of money the Mayor gave Carter.”